Welcome to Part 3 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to create an automated traffic machine using WordPress.
In Part 1 of this article series, we provided an overview of the process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post great content consistently to automatically attract new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In this section of the series, we will look at the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. You will learn how to configure a WordPress site to bring visitors automatically as you begin to add new content on your site.
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Phase
Being able to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by most business owners as their greatest challenge online. With competition becoming increasingly more difficult businesses are looking for any advantage available to get better results online.
Having the ability to generate traffic on demand can provide you with a tremendous advantage over other competitors. For business owners, having an expertly configured website means having a significant competitive advantage from the very start.
Configuration Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally set up by a website-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the difference:
An expertly configured WordPress site gives you a web presence plus online business marketing automation!
(An expertly configured site gives you a web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing process!)
Not only does a whole lot more labor go into building and integrating an automated online business marketing process into your website, it also takes a special kind of expertise.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A True Story (Kind Of) …
Everything is humming along in the gizmo-making plant when things suddenly stop working.
As no one can figure out what’s happened, the manager decides to call in an expert to fix the problem.
Soon afterwards, the expert arrives and, without saying a word, immediately walks towards the main control box. After staring silently at the wiring board for what seems like 2 minutes, the expert then produces a tiny little hammer from his utility belt and makes a single tap near the right side of the control unit.
Immediately, every machine in the factory floor springs to life once again.
The plant manager is relieved as he thanks the expert, who then leaves as quickly as he had arrived.
A few days after resolving the incident, the factory manager receives a request for payment of services rendered for $5,000.
Bewildered, the manager calls the expert. Why were they charged such a ridiculously high fee for so little time spent delivering such minimal amount of work? He then requests an itemized invoice to be sent and hangs up.
The next day, an invoice arrives on the manager’s desk. Upon opening the envelope, this is what he sees:
The number one challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the above story, how much money did the widget plant stand to lose when production stopped functioning and no one on the factory floor had the expertise to get things up and running again? Did the expert not have the right to be compensated fairly for having invested years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to quickly repair a very costly problem?
Similarly, if you could have a WP blog configured so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of driving traffic to your site?)
Although the solution to many challenges is often ridiculously easy in hindsight, it rarely turns out to be that way.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site involves more than installing a website and configuring a few settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! In other words, knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to get certain functionalities on your site.
- Which 3rd-party services you need to set up and activate to get certain results
- Which internal and external settings you need to configure in order to ensure that processes will run as expected, etc.
(Driving traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires expertise)
This stage of the WordPress traffic automation system is not so technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. This is because it’s not as easy as installing and configuring one or two plugins, clicking a button … it’s all this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your server, your WordPress site, and a number of external sites and online services …
(Expertly configuring your website involves more than just configuring a few WordPress settings)
If we try to flowchart the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look something like this …
(A simplistic flowchart of the steps involved in the configuration phase)
Let’s examine these areas.
Your Server
We’re not talking here about the process of configuring your hosting account for installation purposes. What we are talking about, is configuring settings in your web server that affect how your website will handle all web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be fine-tuned for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic your site will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for both bad and good traffic and then adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing spam protection and preventing security threats, to configuring domain and email redirections, setting up 404 error page redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your hosting control panel settings for handling things like email forwarding, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to set up and configure a number of external sites and online solutions.
Configuring External Services
The purpose of setting up external sites is that all content will get posted to a central location (your WordPress site) and from there, it will be automatically distributed to other parts of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and applications.
Once you add these external platforms to your system, content pointing back to your site will get automatically added to your search, social and aggregator accounts. Your site will be given additional exposure to new sources of traffic and new audiences.
Some of these sites and services will need to have accounts set up before configuring your site to save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, you will want to set up the following accounts:
Google Search Console
(Google Webmasters)
Google Search Console lets you tell Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for automatic page indexing, and provides site owners with a range of important information, SEO tools, and diagnostic reports about their website.
Once your account has been with Google have been set up, you can use your account information with traffic-related settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your site’s results, SEO, user engagement, marketing activities, and more, by tracking all user behaviour, pages visited, keywords searched for, social media referrals, etc.
After setting up your account, your account information can be added to WordPress using plugins and instantly fed to various other useful applications and reporting tools.
Bing Webmaster Tools
(Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Search Console. Once your account has been with Bing have been set up, this information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part Two, WordPress offers a self-hosted (WordPress.org) and a hosted (WordPress.com) option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you plan to build a professional online presence for your business.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful tools, which a number of WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account with WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll explain how to integrate these features into your traffic system in the next installment of this article series.
Social Media Accounts
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and get new visitors to your site)
You will need your social media accounts set up before you can integrate these with your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media and social bookmarking accounts and drive new visitors to your site.
You should have pages set up with all of the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.
There are many social bookmarking sites you can set up. You don’t need to create accounts with all of them, just pick the ones that will work with your setup and/or content sharing tools.
(There are many social sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Services, Aggregators, Etc.
There are a number of new online technology platforms and content aggregators that can serve as secondary-level traffic generation sources. Some are free or provide free access levels, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator site that lets you add your WordPress site feed …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your social profiles and RSS feeds. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and users can follow your own RebelMouse website.
There are many different sites and platforms that can be incorporated into your own traffic system. Please contact us if you need assistance exploring some of these, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
Once you have configured your server settings and set up accounts with third-party sites, it’s time to configure your WordPress settings.
WordPress Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that its global settings have been correctly set up.
Let’s go over some key areas.
WordPress Settings
By default, all WordPress installations include a Settings section that allows you to modify your site’s global settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Content entered into fields like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(Global Settings – General Settings Section)
Writing Settings
The Writing Settings area contains one of the most powerful and frequently overlooked traffic notification systems available to WordPress site owners …
(WordPress Settings – Writing Settings)
As described in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have purposely chosen to discourage search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the update services entered into the Update Services field
By default, this section includes only one entry …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress …
(Notify dozens of update services automatically!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
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Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading
This section affects how your content gets seen by visitors when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can influence traffic. For example, choosing to display the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content shows up in RSS feeds and blog post digests, and could play a part in someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your blog to read the rest of the content from summaries, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as traffic is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility feature is enabled or not.
Generally, you would want search engines to visit your site. Leaving the box unchecked allows WordPress to instantly notify all the update services you have listed in the Update Services box when new posts are published (see Writing Settings above). Unless there is a specific reason to discourage search engines from visiting your site, leave this box unchecked …
(Global Settings – Reading Settings)
Discussion Settings
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(WordPress Settings – Discussion Settings)
Permalinks
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Global Settings – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalink URLs …
(Configuring post permalinks)
If you need help setting up permalinks, go here: Using Permalinks To Improve Your WordPress SEO
Configuring Settings – WordPress Plugins
The WordPress developer community makes available plugins that help to add almost every type of functionality to your website, including traffic generation.
Here are some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
WordPress Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for dealing with both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what type of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, you simply cannot afford to ignore the importance of web security.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from causing your website harm)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your WordPress blog invisible to bot and hacker attacks.
Go here to learn more:
SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by improving your site’s SEO …
(SEO plugins like Yoast SEO help drive traffic by making your site more search engine friendly)
Use a powerful plugin like Yoast SEO to improve your website’s search engine optimization. When properly configured, this plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find and index, it also lets you configure how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.
Social Sharing Plugins
Allowing your visitors to easily share your content online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you publish content that adds value to readers.
(WordPress users can easily add social sharing buttons to their website using WordPress plugins)
There are loads of social sharing plugins to choose from.
Most social sharing plugins allow you to select which social sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up custom update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to protect content or downloads which users can unlock by linking or tweeting your page.
WordPress – Traffic Generation Theme Features
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that can help improve your site’s traffic generation capabilities.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring design and layout elements of your site, some themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site linking structure for faster indexing, easily add analytics, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes come with built-in traffic optimization features)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes include built-in social sharing features)
Configuring Other WordPress Features
Last but not least in the WordPress traffic system configuration process, are the things that need to be configured outside of the global settings.
These include:
Website Legal Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in traffic numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle good and unwanted traffic but also for all the situations that can damage your business as more and more people begin to visit your website.
If you are making money online (or plan to), you need to make sure that your website remains compliant with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Site Legally Compliant?)
For a detailed article on how to quickly add legal pages to your WordPress site, refer to this article:
Post Categories & Tags
Categories and post tags help to improve your site’s SEO, which helps you get more traffic.
(Post categories help search engines better classify and index your website, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, it’s best to set up your website’s post tags and categories during the Website Planning Stages.
When looking at ways to automate and improve traffic, you will want to review and make sure that the post tags and post categories you have set up.
A Site Map Of Your Posts And Pages
A site map that lists all of your site’s pages and posts is not only a useful navigation tool for users, it can also help external tools discover more of your web content …
(A site map is not just great for visitors, but for traffic too!)
It’s important to note that an HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same things. Although Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which a plugin like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), making it easier for visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Page – An Additional Source Of Web Traffic!
When online visitors type in the wrong URL into their web browser or click on a dead link, they will normally be greeted with a 404 page …
(A WordPress 404 Not Found error page)
Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost. …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 Not Found page can be set up on your server, there are several plugins for WordPress that let you easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Process – Summary
Once you have your website fully set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to automatically bring web traffic is publish great content consistently.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, is quite involved and elaborate , requiring the configuration and integration of a number of different elements and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The knowledge and expertise involved in expertly configuring a WordPress site can take some web developers a long time to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the aspects of the process that can be automated. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Three
To read more, click here:
This tutorial is part of a comprehensive series of articles designed to help business owners learn how to grow their business with a WordPress-driven website and proven web marketing methods.
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